Saturday, January 31, 2009

Artichoke Pizza

After doing what seems like endless amounts of dishes in culinary school, I am exhausted. I want to:1. Get away from my classmates who decided to be lazy and did nothing but watch some of us do all the dishes2. Sit down and never get up3. Vegetate and distract myself with fun things (eating anyone?)

When I got to accomplish all these activities, I was in a much better mood. I met my friend and decided to try a decadent and giant pizza at artichoke. Artichoke Pizza has an old New Yorker appeal, but with a gourmet sophisticated touch. It is simply a storefront, no tables, just a counter, where you order your pizza or slice and huddle on the sidewalk (no matter if it is a cold winter night.) The ceiling is an art decoWe ordered a whole pizza (for two-quite ambitious seeing as though they serve one size 18 inches.), the artichoke and spinach. This creamy white pizza, with bubble up brown cheese and crispy chewy crust was filling and amazing. It was a very comforting pizza. It taste as though someone smeared artichoke spinach dip over the pizza, added a few tender artichoke leaves and some mozzarella and baked it to oozing savory perfection. It was a very different pizza than I was used to, not a bad thing. But different. I have never really had a creamy pizza. It is something you can’t eat too much of, or maybe you can and just get really sick. We paired this pizza with woodchuck hard apple cider, which seemed like the perfect beverage with this pizza. Sweet granny smith cider cut the heaviness and creaminess of the pizza. For that day, after all those dirty dishes, artichoke pizza was what I definitely needed. It is an indulgence for sure.

Oh those damn dishes! I used to have fun at the dish station in cooking school though.. we would play baseball with rolling pins as bats, chinois as helmets and .. err ... eggs as baseballs. I was young and dumb.. :-)

Never went to Artichoke pizza but I was at Arturo's a few days ago... love the coal oven pizzas.. yum! I'm putting Artichoke on my list of places to try.

Lorraine: that is how I feel all the time reading food blogs, craving for something I don't have. Heather: In NYC, any restaurant name you can think, we probably have it. Maybe I should do a post on strange and bizarre restaurant names.

Hey Abby! I love your blog - I feel like we were cut from the same mold. You should check out foodbuzz.com and sign up to be a featured publisher. I'm looking forward to a weekend free of numbers 1, 2 and 3 three in your post. and lots of sitting. We made cassoulet today - I am dedicating this weekend to vegetables not poached in butter. also, I added you to my blogroll!

CASSOULET is amazing. I actually made duck confit, just to try this weekend. Duck fat is a good thing, just a not soo good thing for your body. I am glad to have met you Emily and I look forward to reading your blog.

I have been meaning to get to Artichoke! Looks great. Went to Arturo's recently after not having gone for a year or two and was kind of dissapointed...I feel like it's gone downhill! (Arturo lovers, don't kill me!) Where are you going to culinary school?